9. The Score

Page view and breaks

A Score pane shows the music on pages by default, laid out as it will print: systems broken to the page’s width, pages under one another with the title on the first. Turned off, Page View shows one long line, scrolled across. In a presentation, you can choose where systems and pages break.

Page view, system and page breaks

Available on every platform.

Page View

Page View in the Score pane’s ⚙ turns it on and off; a new Score pane starts as Settings say (on at first), and the built-in workspaces made for the score (Score, Score with TAB, Tab & Score) open on pages. On pages, the pane shows them on a desk: each system starts with its clef and the key in force, bar numbers sit at each system’s start, and the first page carries the song’s title, with the subtitle, artist, composer and arranger from Score Setup. A presentation’s name is written under the title.

Stab breaks the music into systems so they fill the width evenly, the last one left at its natural width. With Shrink to fit the page on (Score Setup › Staves, on by default), the staff gets smaller, down to the size you allow, until the tallest system fits on a page. The page’s size, orientation, margins and spacing are Score Setup’s too.

Each pane keeps its own Page View setting, so you can work in one long line in one pane and watch the pages in another. Everything still works on pages: the caret, the playhead, selecting, note input and following.

System and page breaks

Breaks belong to a presentation, so the full score and each part can break in their own places. In the working score, the breaks are Stab’s, and the break items are greyed.

To break before a bar:

1. In the Score pane’s context chip, pick the presentation.
2. Put the caret in the bar that should start the new system or page.
3. From the pane’s ⚙, choose System Break Here or Page Break Here.

The item is checked when the caret’s bar has that break; choosing it again takes the break off. Each is one undo step. The first bar can’t take a break.

In Page View you can also drag a system’s end, at its last barline:

• Left, onto a barline: the bars after it go down to the next system.
• Right, past the end: bars of the next system come up, one for each bar’s width you drag.

The break moves, any break it passed over goes, and the whole move is one undo step.

For an even layout without placing breaks by hand, set Bars per system in Score Setup’s Spacing section: at most that many bars a system, counting bars of rest gathered together as one.

Lay Out Fresh

A song read from a PDF or a photo keeps its page’s layout where it differs from Stab’s own: stems and beams as printed, chords written on the other staff, the clefs of a piano part, slurs on the side they were drawn, and its systems and pages in a presentation called “As printed”.

Lay Out Fresh, in the Score pane’s ⚙, goes back to Stab’s own layout. It takes away every stem, beam and staff choice in the song (yours too), the clefs set, the piano parts’ hands, any “As printed” presentation, and slurs placed on a side. It’s one undo step, and it’s greyed when there’s nothing to take away.